


The War that Never Was

by HolmesianDeduction



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, F/M, relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolmesianDeduction/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is common knowledge that the Smileys are perpetually at war with one another.</p>
<p>It is not common knowledge, however, that this is patently untrue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The War that Never Was

             Contrary to common gossip, the Smileys were not perpetually at war with one another, if at all.  George Smiley knew this, as did Ann, although there were times in which even they were fooled by appearances. The truth, a George might have had it, was in the details.

             It was in how, on an especially rainy day, Ann Smiley arrived home from her most recent escapade to find her husband sitting by the phonograph, his chin resting atop his hands as he stared intently into space whilst a symphony orchestra played Liszt.  She had purchased the recording specifically for him despite his general disinterest in music because she had recognised the symphony’s name as being modelled after one of the lengthy German books that lined their shelves.

             It was, too, in the way that George Smiley one day noticed in his wife’s eyes a keen understanding of at least a large portion of the words leaving his lips as he read aloud from a battered old copy of Goethe’s Faust.  When he asked her when she had learned some German, she had only answered with one of her coy smiles before slipping out for the night, a few words of thickly accented German left in his ear.

             It was in the way that for all of his secretive nature, he rarely denied her the answers she sought unless he absolutely had to.  She was wise to the ways of the Circus in ways that other wives were not, having worked there briefly as a secretary prior to her marriage, and was far more canny than she appeared to most.  It was in the game they had at dinner one night in which they played at who could tell the most about a person of the other’s choosing just by observing.

             It was in how she had her “big loves” and her “little loves,” but at the end of the day, there was always George.  Quiet, unassuming George Smiley of obscure origin - the straight man to her comedian, her law and her husband, and the only person to be termed her best friend. And it was perhaps the long, quiet nights that the two of them spent in each other’s company that most cemented, at least in their minds, that there was a strange sort of peace, at least within the confines of the house at Bywater Street.


End file.
